The Hay Bale Chia Monster

Hi! Larry Zoro here. There is nothing better than two or more gardeners fighting over what works. Check this link:  Gardeners fighting each other over what works and doesn't work. .

Some gardeners think hay bale gardening and straw bale gardening are the same things. Most people shudder at using hay bales. They think they become giant chia heads. How foolish they are. "I made sure it was straw, and not hay...." they say before setting out their garden.

Hay is nothing more than grass that might contains a few weeds. Doe anyone like using hay but me, myself, and I?  

A composting writer said it has its advantages. Using hay in compost piles has two distinct advantages. If it is good enough for your compost pile then it's good enough for Larry Zoro's hay bale gardening.

Using Hay as Mulch for Organic Gardening You should have no fear in using hay. Beware of those making false claims in not using hay bales. They have an unwarranted fear of the hay bale chia monster.

Is you're gardening too much work?

Every garden is too much work for me. That is why I wrote my books on gardening. I want easy, managed free gardens.

However making your own bales does take work. But if you want an organic source, you must make them yourselves. I know everyone in the country mows grass. Why not put the grass in a plastic tote and turn it into something useful that you can grow from. A grass bale with potting hole, placed in a trench is not really  that hard.

I think straw bale gardening which I am opposed is too much work. You have to buy the bales, ship them to your yard, set them up and condition each one. Let's not forget the digging they do in each bale. Straw gardeners suggest digging right into the bale in order to make a growing hole. If they don't use shovels, straw gardeners must use their hands. Ooh that's nasty. Can't digging be by the hands or is it just scooping?

  

Hay Bale versus Straw Bale Gardening

My techniques for gardening is radically different than straw bale gardening. I laugh when I hear someone calling my gardening straw bale gardening. Join the Hay Bale Gardening Revolution. Leave the sick melting wheat straw bales where they belong in the toxic field.

I Hate Bale Gardening Until I Found Zoro

Question: Straw producers thought I was nuts asking for organic straw. 


Ans. It all organic to them. They never think twice when using herbicides or pesticides. Without their use, they could not produce wheat. If the wheat is toxic, then so are the straw bales.

Pesticide use on wheat.

MAKE YOUR OWN BALES THE LARRY ZORO WAY.

Question: The straw bales didn't come close to making it through the entire growing season - one end or side would always start to collapse.

Ans. I know they turned into mush. If you continue with straw bale gardening, at least bury your bales. Make sure you wear a hazmat suit from all your overuse of chemicals.

Question: I had an issue was fire ants. Even though I treated around the bales before starting I still had them in the bales but, unlike my raised beds, I couldn't tell they were there until I went to take apart the bales. 


Ans. Make a trench and place your bales in it. If you get ants, fill the trench with water and drown those suckers.

At the end of the rainbow is a hay bale garden habitat. Join the revolution. Make your own bale garden without toxic chemicals.

Mr. Zoro Can I Use Grass?

I suggest you keep your mind sharp and don't become deluded by smoking grass. Oh! you mean can you use grass in gardening?

Most people are now using totes to make garden bales. I have a video showing you how make a growing bale and I have the plans for holding the twine is in my book, "Hay Bale Garden Habitat."

Tote Bale Gardening

There must be a way to use all that cut, pure natural grass. There is but use only a pure source, no herbicide drenched or toxic grass.

The secret in making a bale is by using newspaper. Only use black and white paper, the colored newspaper is toxic.

First place your hay bale insert and twine in the tote. Next, line the bottom of your plastic tote with newspaper. Place in your PVC pipe and compact the grass clippings around the PVC pipe. Before tying off the bale place on top more newspaper around the PVC pipe. Let your grass bale age before planting. When it is dry, dig a trench, and grow a plant.

Help your friendly neighborhood earthworms by burying bales.

Questions and Answers

With all the knowledge today about gardening it should be simple. We do not have the time to work and produce an unproductive garden. I'm going to answer questions to help those people who had no success in straw bale gardening. Maybe I can get them to try my system of gardening.

Question: The bales,(being skeptical, I started with 2) started falling apart almost immediately.

Ans. A well made bale should stay together. When you cook your bale, it turns to mush. I don't cook bales or leave them on top of the soil. I put them in a trench. In a trench the bales cannot fall apart, even though in my type of gardening, they never do anyway.

Question:In straw bale gardening only three plants showed any growth- 1 hybrid tomato grew to about 8 inches, got stressed and made 1 tiny tomato.

Ans. The fallacy that many gardeners believe is that the plant will grow into the bale. It does not. It only grows as large as the hole you make that is filled with soil.

Question: What is the purpose of the bale? When the bale is placed within a trench, it wicks up water. Although plants hate too much moisture, the bale will normalize its moisture so that the plant is not drenched or dry. However the bales above ground has a tenancy to dry out. Unless it is well conditioned and kept wet, it will suck up the moisture from the planting medium. I did some test with a moisture probe on my Bales in which I talk about in my, "Hay Bale Garden Habitat book."


Here is a picture of my garden. It has no fertilizer other than rabbit manure, soil, bio-char, and peat moss.

Tote Bale Gardening

I made a quick video today showing you my technique in growing in bales. Hope you enjoy.

http://youtu.be/EsyccFdqKTE

False claim: "No digging, no tilling, and no hoeing."

If there is no digging, are you laying the seedling on top of the bale? WikiHow instructions teach us that digging is very much a part of making a straw bale garden, "Use a trowel to dig a hole in the top of the bale for each plant." Sounds like digging to me. Who is fibbing us into no dig gardens? A State University has this to say, "To plant transplants, such as tomatoes, dig a hole in the top of the bale." I thought we did not have to dig? Which is easier, digging in a straw bale or well mulched soil? And yet the experts are saying, "Straw Bale Gardening: No-Dig Gardens Growing Vegetables"

No tilling. Tilling is a process that prepares the soil. You can use a rototiller and make the soil prepared for your growing bed. I can rototill a garden in about a few hours. How long does it take to prepare a bale? "The conditioning process takes about 14 days," Or you can overwinter your bales. 

No hoeing is a preference for all gardeners. You can use a hoe or not use one. How do you get a weed free garden without hoeing? A straw bale gardening author gives us the answer, "Cover the space between the rows with a weed barrier." Great insight! Thank you! Do you think that any of us gardeners would have weed problems if we could afford expensive landscape fabric? Is that a reason to advertise your book as a breakthrough garden with no weeding?  I could sell any garden book with the claim, Gardening with NO Weeding.

I'm author Larry Zoro. The Hay Baler Revolution started with the question, Why can't we use hay bales instead of buying expensive straw bales for gardening? Why can't I make my own bales instead of being stuck with straw bales? 

When I began, I knew nothing of straw bale gardening and developed my own techniques of growing in hay bales. See my copyright dates on my books and you'll see I'm the Master Hay Bale Gardener. I don't want to use straw bale gardening techniques and never will. I have developed my own.  I am original. 

Let's get down to basics. Nothing grows in straw or hay bales. It is foolishness to think that any kind of bales have nutrition to feed growing plants. After a cow pooped on a bale, it was the seedling that grew from the manure not from the straw. Get in tuned with real horticulture that works.

Beware of Toxic Straw Bales and those who want you to garden in them.

Straw Bale Gardening

I got a free straw bale gardening book at Amazon. They are a dime a dozen. There are so many of the same kind of books coping one another. It is like the same author has written most of them.

In one part of the book I read about conditioning the straw bale. They call it cooking the straw bale or composting the bale.  They use plenty of nitrogen to condition the bale. Nitrogen can stunt the plant or cause it to grow green with less fruit. I would be careful at using nitrogen by the cup fulls as suggested, it is toxic.

In the Hay Bale Gardening Revolution we bury the bales and have the bales compost naturally. Microbes and earthworms do the job without toxic overuse of chemicals.

The book suggested the warmth of the cooking bales will be nice for plants since they love warm bales. How ridiculous. The roots might like a normal growing temperature, but grow early without an hot house and the tops of your plants will die. I know. I've tried early growing outside of a hot house, it can't be done.

One reviewer had said my techniques were too hard. Talk about hard. Try cooking a bale. It would be easier cooking it in hot water than a chemical bath.  Most reviewers always point to straw bales as the answer to their gardening problems. They are trying to con many into buying their books. That's right, they are authors soliciting their books by writing bad reviews about other gardening books in order to deceive many into buying their books. Isn't that right Toy Reviewer? Toy reviewer is a famous straw bale author who uses his real name unless he writes you a bad review in order to increase his book sales. The things people do for money. The lies they tell just to increase their book sales.

I'm keeping my books cheap so you can have a successful garden instead of the ones shown with the magic of Photoshop.

We will be looking more into the straw bale revival, and showing you their false claims that simply doesn't work any better than throwing a seed into the ground and covering it with fertilizer.

Many have touted their claim as the originators of straw bale gardening. Do you know it started? It probably started with cow named Bessie when she discharged some excrement onto a straw bale and a farmer noticed a plant started to grow on the bale. He then had an idea to write a book and spread his new growing techniques that he said took years of study.

Burn Garden Burn

I tried to have a controlled fire but to no avail. It got out of control. I had to do the work of a fireman.  My main concern was not to let it head towards the field.

I bought a steel garbage can and thought I could burn through a hole I made in the bottom. The can would control the burn. No, it was a bad idea. Even though the grass had weight on it, the fire got out of the turned over can.  However, I did make a stove. The grass that burned, produced enough heat to cook eggs in a pan. I'll remember my garbage can when the power goes out.

Beware Straw Balers

Clopyralid products with names like Stinger, Reclaim, and Transline have been used on the wheat and oat straw bales that many use in their gardens. Clopyralid is an herbicide and is particularly damaging to peas, tomatoes and sunflowers and can render potatoes, lettuce and spinach inedible. Clopyralid lingers in manure and compost and spoils plants years after it has been applied.

You can still buy clopyralid products. The only States that have banned it are NY, CA, HI, and WA. Halloween bales may have some fire retardant chemicals sprayed on them.

Using organic hay, grass, leaves, or cover crops is the best way to go. You only use what you are assured of as being safe. The use of a pine baler or my home baler will make you the tight bales that will give you the bale garden of your dreams. Get my plans for the home baler and join the new revolution of hay bale gardening.

Home Baler Plans

Hay Bale Gardening Revolution

My type of gardening is not "Straw Bale Gardening." I don't cook the straw or have to punch holes in the straw to plant seedlings. You won't see me writing any more books on hay bale gardening. My techniques work. I don't need to tell you a better way, I already did. Last year I took many trips to Pennsylvania while leaving my plants unattended in 90 degree heat. They survived. The pictures in my books are original.

I make hay bales with a pine straw baler. I am going to be coming out with a new design called, "Hay Baler Station." While others are deciding what straw bale book to buy, join my hay bale revolution.

What do you think about those peppers? They were grown in drought with very little watering.